Tampa Burn (14 page)

I didn't feel the least bit sorry for the guy.

At her Lexus, rubbing her already swelling knuckles, Dewey told me, “And I tried to help you beg out of it because of your glasses. All these years, I didn't have a clue. What were you back in school, some kinda hot-shit wrestling champion or something?”

Opening the door for her, I said, “Something like that.”

 

 

SHE
didn't want me to follow her home, but I did. Her bungalow has a Spanish tile roof and conch-pink siding. The house is built on low stilts a couple feet above a quarter-acre of bare limestone gravel, the property landscaped for minimum maintenance.

The moon was three days before full, high overhead—its mountainous polar regions visible where the temperature was 300 degrees below zero out there in space. In the moon's cold light, I could see papaya and palms planted in ornamental clusters, and a banana thicket, too. The papaya and sugar bananas were good. Some mornings for breakfast, Dewey and I would eat them chilled, fresh lime juice squirted on.

Seeing the fruit trees in moon shadow caused me to realize something. Caused me to realize that I might not awake in bed with her ever again, the two of us lounging around, talking during breakfast, laughing at silly things, sharing small secrets. The end of something was in those shadows. I felt a quaking sense of loss.

I knocked. She refused to allow me in. Finally, though, she came out onto the porch. She had ice in a plastic bag, holding it on the knuckles of her right hand.

Standing in the moonlight, I told her about Lake. What had happened to my son. Her reaction—horror, revulsion—was genuine. She'd had some bad things happen in her life. She knew tragedy and grief.

I had to admire her core toughness when she added, “But that doesn't change what I heard tonight. The words you said to the boy's mother. I
know
you. The way your voice sounded. What I heard really, really hurt because I know you meant everything you said. Didn't you?”

There was no anger in her tone now. Just pain and grief. I shook my head and made a sound of exasperation. “I have too much respect for you, our friendship, to do anything but tell you the truth. Truth is, I
don't
know. It was a shock seeing her. Then finding out about the kidnapping. Hell . . . the only thing I'm sure of is that it scares me, thinking that I might lose you. Lose us. I don't want that to happen.”

I put my hands on her shoulders. Listened to her try and repress a sniffle—Jesus, now I'd made her cry.

I said, “Can I come in? I leave for Miami in the morning. I don't know how long it'll take for me to find my son. If I
can
find him. This may be our only night together for a while.”

But she remained steadfast. “Doc, look . . . what you need to understand is, this not a small deal. If you really are in love with someone else, I've got to make some important decisions fast. We're beyond the dating part. The kid games part. At least, I
thought
we were.”

There was an intentional, underlying meaning there that I didn't grasp.

She removed my hands from her shoulders, touched her fingers briefly to my face, her blue eyes gray in the moonlight, as wide and sad as I had ever seen them. “I'm not telling this to hurt you. I know you don't need any more pressure—not with what's happened to your son. I've got to say it, though. You know how we've talked about maybe getting married, maybe one day having kids?”

I nodded.

“Well, pal . . . I'm more than six weeks late. My period, it's way late. After work, I stopped at Bailey's General Store and got one of those little test kits. The kind where you pee on the strip. It changes color if you're pregnant. I went to your place thinking we could have a little ceremony. We could find out together.

“But there you were with a woman. A woman who's already been through it. She's already the mother of your son. I get out of the car kinda mixed up, but with all those hopes about us, marriage and a baby, and that's when I hear you say those words to her,
I'll always love you.
That's exactly what you said. And
meant
it.

“You see what I mean? Why something like that would hurt so bad? So I'm not ready to talk about it. Not tonight. Not this week. Probably not for a long while.”

I said, “Oh Jesus . . . I am so, so sorry . . .”

She touched her fingers to my cheek again. “I know you are, you big idiot.” Then: “Go on home, pal. I'll get in touch with you when I'm ready. We'll talk. Just give me some space.”

I covered her hand with mine. “But, Dew, I want to know. Get the test kit. Go to the bathroom now and find out. You really think you might be pregnant? It's . . . that's kind of
exciting.
”

Did I mean that?
Maybe.
Maybe I did.

But she shook her head.

No.

“Uh-uh, no, I can't. Because
I
don't want to know. Not now. I need to get my emotions under control first. After that, we have to have a serious talk. When it's time.

“I don't want the fact that I am or am not pregnant to have any influence. That way, when I find out, we'll both know how things stand between us. The decision will already have been made about us being together. Do you see why I have to do it this way?”

Yeah, I did. A smart lady.

She let me hug her close to my chest and hold her for a moment before she went inside and locked the door.

SEEN
from the I-95 overpass, downtown Miami is an island of ascending spires, silicon on steel, beneath a sky that is incandescent with Gulf Stream colors—lime, corals, blues.

We were on the Interstate now, Tomlinson, Pilar, and I. We were clover-leafing our way down into the city, jockeying among six fast lanes blurred with cars operated by Haitians, Jamaicans, Dominicans, and other tropical immigrants whose donkey-cart driving skills were superb at five miles an hour, but lethal at eighty.

Thrown into the mix were Winnebago Buckeyes, German tourists, and Friendly Sam New Yorkers, plus Cuban Americans who actually knew their away around the badly marked highways, and so used horn and accelerator as weapons of intimidation.

Driving in Miami, even midmorning on a Wednesday, is not for the faint of heart.

Because my old truck doesn't have air-conditioning, and because Tomlinson's Volkswagen Thing is only slightly safer and faster than four slabs of drywall bolted around a toy engine, Pilar asked us to drive her rental Ford.

Lucky me.

I'm at home in a boat under the worst of circumstances. The same is not true of cars. Waves, squalls, and sea bottom are relatively predictable. Miami drivers are not. Which makes me edgy. So I drove with hands at ten-and-two, concentrating mightily on the idiotic maneuverings and macho posturing of other lanes, while Tomlinson maintained a running dialogue with Pilar, the two of them already fast friends.

“Miami, my sister. Behold the great Concrete Mango—South America's northernmost nation. Miami and I, we've got a kinda love-who-cares relationship going. I love her, but I just don't draw enough water for Miami to care about me. Not many dudes do.

“See that building, the tallest building, the one that looks like it's a geode crystal with a broken point? The way it's sheared off at the top? That's the Wachovia Center. A cop banged my head into a wall there a couple times during an antiwar protest way,
way
back. That thing's built
solid,
believe me.

“Then see the Miami Deco-looking high-rise, the one that looks like it's a chunk of chrome off an old Cadillac? That's the Bank of America Tower. I dated one of the top execs there for a while. She was something, man. We'd go across to the Hyatt, Japengos, for appetizers and margaritas. Or eat on the eleventh-floor terrace, the whole city spreading out, then head back to her office. Spend the afternoon with the intercom turned off, making bunny-love magic—which is all I'm going to say about
that.
”

I interrupted. “Thanks for sparing us the details. What might be nice for a change is to hear some silence. Or maybe we could just listen to the radio.”

Still talking to Pilar, he said, “Mister Grumpy. It's because of the driving stress. You can drop this guy into any jungle or island on earth, and he's right at home. Put him on a freeway, though, and his knuckles turn white.”

“I'm trying to concentrate,” I said. “Something wrong with that? All these lunatic drivers . . . my God—did you see the stunt the idiot in that Explorer just pulled? And besides, you're supposed to be helping me look for, what is it, the Second Street exit?”

“Northeast Second Avenue. That's our exit. But first we jump on the I-Three-ninety-five. So we've got a little time.”

Pilar said to me, “I enjoy listening to Tomlinson. He's very sweet, and he's made me laugh for the first time since it happened. I don't see why you should object to the two of us talking.”

I thought:
Perfect. Now she's bonding with my best friend.

I concentrated on driving, yet couldn't help but listen as Tomlinson launched into his monologue about the evils of gas-guzzling SUVs such as the crazed Explorer, muscle cars, pickup trucks—a shot at me, there—and the petroleum industry's scheme to control the world economy.

I find it amazing that someone of his intelligence and insight is a predictable dupe for every left-wing conspiracy theory that comes along. But an individual's politics, like religion, I have learned, is not a reliable or fair gauge of intellect or humanitarian intent. I know intelligent people who embrace equally ridiculous right-wing absurdities. So I try to judge people individually, which is what reasonable people do.

Not that he didn't have a good point about squandering the Earth's fossil fuels. It is a commodity of finite measure, and a consistent agent of hypocrisy: Many Americans abhor the prospect of drilling for oil in our own boundary lands and oceans, yet we all live eager, modern, petroleum-based lives. I can certainly be counted among the hypocrites.

But at Dinkin's Bay Marina, we'd become so tired of hearing Tomlinson's anti-SUV lecturing, his save-the-Earth posturing, that Mack, Jeth, Felix, and a couple of the other fishing guides came up with an idea. A way to play a joke on Tomlinson.

Tomlinson's Volkswagen is several decades old and looks like a German staff car. It's a rusted antique with an 8-gallon fuel tank and a tiny engine that gets thirty-plus miles per gallon—a fact that he's also hammered us over the head with.

So a couple months back, the guides began to slip into the parking lot at night and funnel gas
into
his car's tank, topping it off each and every time Tomlinson used the vehicle.

Every day he got in to use the Volkswagen, he found that the tank was full.

He drove twenty-five miles to Terry Park in Fort Myers to play Roy Hobbs baseball. He drove a hundred miles to Siesta Key Beach to lead the Sunday night drum circle. He drove across the state to visit his boat bum pals at Bahia Mar Marina in Lauderdale. He drove to Stan's Chickee Bar in Goodland and did the Buzzard Lope. He drove to Placida and took the ferry across to Palm Island to teach meditation and lead seminars on Tomlinsonism—his own brand of Buddhism that has so grown in popularity that the man now bundles his hair under a fedora and wears Hollywood sunglasses when he leaves the marina.

I hadn't exaggerated when I told Pilar that, thanks to the Internet, his followers seek him out from around the world.

Our reluctant prophet put hundreds of miles on the Volkswagen, and his gas tank remained full.

At first, he bragged piously about his car. While we drove around in our oil suckers, destroying a fragile planet, he was meeting all transportation needs while leaving only the tiniest of environmental footprints.

“Real men don't have to drive a big car,” he told us. “It's like the bumper stickers you see. Ask yourselves this: What kinda car would Jesus have driven?”

While Mack wondered aloud, “Hummm . . . something amphibious?” Jeth, the stuttering fishing guide, replied,

“There's a NASCAR driver named Hay-zus. If that's the one you mean, he runs a 340 big block Dodge V-8, 750 horsepower. But if you're talkin' about gas mileage, I wouldn't think ol' Jesus' car would be a smart choice.”

After another week or so of hard driving, though, and with the tank still full, Tomlinson began to fret. Maybe his fuel gauge was broken. So he took the car down to Island Amoco.

The gauge checked out just fine.

Amazing.

He drove to Fort Myers Beach, LaBelle, and Estero. He drove to St. Petersburg, Venus, and then to Burnt Store Marina to hang out at the docks and drink at the bar.

The gas needle still pointed to full.

Which was impossible. The Volkswagen was running without burning any gasoline. No logical human being would have accepted that possibility. But Tomlinson, though capable of logical thought, does not embrace a logical view of the world. His beat-up old Volkswagen, he decided, had somehow been vested with spiritual qualities and unworldly abilities.

One night, stoned and very drunk on El Dorado rum, he wobbled up to my house, pounded on my door, and told me, “Doc. I finally figured it out. She's got a soul in her. My car. I think maybe she's an old lover of mine from a previous life. It's a feeling I've got. Like, it just
came
to me, man. That this old lover is now inhabiting my Volkswagen, come back to help me seek enlightenment . . . or maybe screw with me and spy on me, too. Sabotage new relationships, break down on the open road just when I'm horniest—who knows. I've had good women and bad, so it's a crap shoot when it comes to dealing with the new incarnations of old sweeties.